Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Tohoku Electric Power Co., the
utility that provides electricity to the region in Japan
devastated by the earthquake and tsunami, may have to consider
rolling blackouts because of higher-than-expected temperatures.

The company planned to buy 800 megawatts from Tokyo
Electric Power Co. as of about 8:30 a.m. yesterday and then
decided to increase it to 1,100 megawatts because average
temperatures in its service area rose to more than its forecast
of 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit), said Satoru
Ishii, a company spokesman, by phone.

“If Tohoku implements power outages, manufactures for
automobile and precision machinery may see an impact on their
production,” said Tomohiro Jikihara, a Tokyo-based analyst at
JPMorgan Chase & Co. “It is all up to the weather now.
Temperatures tend to rise quite high in early August and start
to be milder later in the month. So, the crucial stage is the
next 7 days or so.”

Tohoku Electric has a contract to purchase as much as 1,400
megawatts of power from Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, this
summer to ease the power generation shortage. When temperatures
rise by an average 1 degree, demand increases by about 300
megawatts, Ishii said.

“In principle, we are not planning to impose blackouts at
this moment, but the situation may change if temperatures go
higher.”

Tohoku’s so-called reserve rate for supply -- a measure of
capacity -- was 2.8 percent higher than yesterday’s demand,
according to a statement posted on its website. A rate below 3
percent prompts the government to alert Tohoku’s clients to
further reduce consumption, according to Ishii.

Tight Supply

The company compiles a forecast of the reserve rate for the
following day at around 6:00 p.m. every day. At the forecast
yesterday evening, the reserve rate was 3.5 percent for today.

At around 8:00 a.m. each day, the utility reviews the
forecast, which could trigger rolling blackouts if the rate
remains below 3 percent.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest maker of gasoline-electric vehicles, is making the Tohoku region its third
Japanese production hub after Aichi prefecture in the central
Japan and Kyushu region in the southwest.

Toyota is not taking any measures to prepare for possible
blackouts “at the moment,” said Toyota spokeswoman Shiori
Hashimoto by phone from Tokyo. “We have no problem with power
supply in the Tohoku region.”

The government has already ordered industrial power users
in areas covered by Tohoku and Tepco in June to cut consumption
by 15 percent from July 1 to help cope with a lack of generation
capacity following the earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Tohoku Electric’s four reactors and five of its thermal
power generators with a capacity of 6,670 megawatts have been
idled since March 11. This was followed by loss of 1,000
megawatts of capacity due to damage to hydroelectric plants
caused by heavy rain in late July.

The utility’s 28 hydroelectric power plants stopped
operations because of four days of heavy rain from July 27, said
a company spokesman Hiroki Enami. This includes a 460-megawatts
pumped storage power station, which elevates water to an upper
reservoir when extra electricity is available at night.